Human Rights and International Communication Office recommends rerunning elections in Moldova

The Human Rights and International Communication Office (HRICO/OCIDO) considers the accusation that the April 5 parliamentary elections in Moldova were rigged is plausible and recommends returning the elections, Info-Prim Neo reports, quoting a communiqué from the organization. “HRICO/OCIDO can now promote the assessment that the results of the legislative elections in Moldova have been seriously affected – both by a dishonest election campaign described as such by numerous neutral observers, including by the fact that the public television and radio did not observe the principles of independence and impartiality, favoring the ruling party, and by the multiple vote or the variety of identification papers when there was no voter book, which augments the rigging risk,” the communiqué says. According to HRICO/OCIDO, the accurateness of the election registers cannot be verified or they cannot be updated and there is no control over the putting of the stamp showing that the person took part in elections on the identity document or a mechanism allowing the national or international observers to react or intervene quickly. The organization stresses that the absenteeism caused by economic migration could have misled the observers about the high turnout of voters at polling places, making it difficult to discover the multiple vote. Also, the voting process in the Transnistrian secessionist region could not be adequately controlled. “Therefore, we consider that the accusation about the considerable tainting of the April 5 elections is plausible and that the elections should be rerun in a reasonable period of time, by observing the conditions of an election campaign without incidents, without discrimination, with equality of chances and access to public means,” the communiqué reads. HRICO/OCIDO also says that the legitimate suspicion of a significant part of the active Moldovan electorate should be responded with a just and durable solution on the part of the human rights protection organizations. HRICO/OCIDO calls on the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the OSCE and other national and international organizations to intervene and protect the protesters arrested in Chisinau and contribute to an effective investigation of the vote rigging accusations, starting with the situation of 183,000 persons that died during the last 15-20, who were said to had voted on the election day. Besides representatives of the Opposition, a number of nongovernmental organizations, nonaffiliated public personalities and journalists from Moldova and abroad also maintain that the elections had been fixed. HRICO/OCIDO was founded in Bucharest in 2001 on the joint initiative of citizens of the United States, the European Union and Romania. It brought together militants for human rights that contributed to the strengthening of the democratic environment in Eastern Europe: Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia. In Romania, Moldova and Ukraine, the organization’s members and collaborators have participated as national and international observers in the local and parliamentary elections, including in Transnistria, since 1990. HRICO/OCIDO says that its observers to the April 5 elections did not obtain the collegial support of the OSCE Mission in Chisinau though they sought it and were met inimically at the Central Election Commission.